Business Emergency Operation Centers
Beat Intro
Voiceover
00:00 This is the Beat – a podcast series that keeps you in the know about the latest community policing topics facing our nation.
Interview
TeNeane Bradford
00:08 Hello! My name is TeNeane Bradford and on behalf of the COPS Office I’d like to introduce to you Ethan Beckham, emergency and risk manager at Northwest Arkansas Community College. Ethan is here today to talk to us about business emergency operations centers. Can you describe what a business emergency operations center, otherwise known as BEEOC, is and how a BEEOC functions?
Ethan Beckham
00:31 Essentially what we have realized over the last decade, give or take, is that as it relates to major incidents— in this case a lot of what I’ll refer to are disasters, but the same could be said for smaller incidents, community based emergencies, different things of that nature—is that it is not simply the role of government and government cannot alone recover that community that was initially impacted to the level that it needs to be recovered to. We realize, and we have for quite some time, that this requires a coordinated effort. This “whole community approach” is what you have probably heard. That naturally involves the private sector. They play a critical role in our daily lives before an event ever occurs, so the idea that they would continue to play that role as that community begins that response and recovery process makes perfect sense.
But, there hasn’t been a very efficient way to coordinate that process in the past. Several states, and now even at the national level, over the course of the last several years, have looked at different models to say, “How are we going to coordinate this public-private sector partnership,” involving those groups that you naturally think of in addition to faith-based organizations, non-profits, your private retail, transportation, communications businesses, and all of those that play critical in our infrastructure in different groups.
The business emergency operations center acts as a coordination point for the public sector to interface directly with the private sector and vice versa.
TeNeane
02:23 Since a BEEOC is private-sector organized, what is the connection between public safety during a crisis or emergency and BEEOCs?
Ethan
02:34 The central role of the business emergency operations center is two-fold—information and resources, tangible resources. So that information piece, there’s still the appropriate method to gather that information. Those on the local level still go up that natural chain to their state emergency operation center and function in that same capacity. Now we have yet one more opportunity for information flow, situational awareness, and it’s important that we understand that that information flow is bi-directional in that it can go up to the state EOC or to the regional level, and then back down. Think about how many people we start to impact through that. The other one is resources. Those resources that we so badly need during major events—consumer packaged goods, like diapers, water, and laundry detergent—and then those that we to respond, like generators, and heavy equipment and different things like that. And this is yet one more mechanism to try and find that, because we know that state governments, local governments, even the federal government—none of us have all of the resources that we would need in any given time, so this is an avenue using that chain that still exists to go up for those resource requests. This allows just one more piece to that.
TeNeane
04:06 What, specifically, what type of resources could a business emergency operations center provide to law enforcement in emergency or crisis situations?
Ethan
04:15 That’s a great question, and one that I’ve had to answer a couple of times and I’m happy to do so. When we talk about this, and even when I’ve talked about it for the last 5 minutes or so, we’re talking about kind of these disasters, these larger scale events. Not necessarily those daily events that law enforcement has to pay so close attention to and they’re out there every day. But whether it’s those small events or those large events, that information flow is huge. Let me give you an example, we did an exercise for a catastrophic earthquake along the New Madrid seismic zone last year, and we were able to gain instant situational awareness of what roadways were affected, simply by turning to the private sector and looking at their resources. All of their drivers that they have on the road, all of their facilities—they all have the ability to communicate, in this case through satellite—so it was a level of communication that we could still use. They were able to instantly ping back to the BEEOC, and we were subsequently able to share that with the state EOC and down to the locals, of what we were seeing as far as our ability to transport goods in and out of a certain area. You can imagine how useful that information becomes when it is so quickly attainable. Rather than asking our law enforcement officers to go out there—who are already inundated with an issue at that time, who are responding to that event, and have limited numbers to go out and do one more task. That is certainly not the only thing, but that illustrates just one more piece of that beyond “Let me help you with resources,” which is so often what we initially started talking about when we want to go to the private sector. But it’s important that we understand it goes well beyond just those tangible goods.
TeNeane
06:26 How can law enforcement agencies reach a business emergency operation center for resources to facilitate public safety during a crisis or emergency?
Ethan
06:35 As BEEOC’s begin to coordinate along state lines, you’ve seen several states that now have BEEOCs—at last study there were 27 states exploring a BEEOC concept, and there are several more that already have BEEOC’s operating successfully. As we look at that, it’s important that we don’t necessarily put ourselves in a position to change the way we do business. We’re here simply to make it a little more efficient and a little more effective. So that information flow still exists as it would before, at that local level. They still would look to their state emergency operations center, and we would be there almost as an arm to that state EOC—we being the BEEOC.
TeNeane
07:28 This is such important information. So how do other centers today find out more information about BEEOCs and where should the listeners go to find this information?
Ethan
07:40 As this concept is still relatively new, there’s not one specific source, or one website, or one location that I can necessarily point them to, but let me step back for a moment and tell you briefly how we at the State of Arkansas approached that and how we came to where we are. We worked very closely with our private sector partners and our NGOs and the state, and decided to look at other states and what they had done, and adapt their models to fit our needs. We polled so many of these states. When I talked earlier about 27 states exploring it, and there’s now just recently announced, there’s a national BEEOC through FEMA and DHS. There are so many different ideas out there on this subject I would simply encourage anybody that’s interested in this to look and do their research, and take what has been now these lessons learned from multiple states and adapt them to fit your needs within your state. We all have different needs. Certainly the business environment and business demographics in Northwest Arkansas and Arkansas is different than some other states. So fit that model to fit your needs.
TeNeane
09:04 Thank you so much Ethan for providing us with your expertise, and time.
Ethan
09:08 Thank you.
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Disclaimer:
09:26 The opinions contained herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official position or polices of the U.S. Department of Justice. References to specific agencies, companies, products, or services should not be considered an endorsement by the authors or the U.S. Department of Justice. Rather, the references are illustrations to supplement discussion of the issues.
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